Tater Salad

It took me a few years to learn to appreciate this delicacy served at picnics, potlucks, and funerals. Church socials, family reunions and basically any other gathering that served food always seemed to have several different kinds of potato salad. Potato salad or tater salad as we call it in my family is a gathering requirement. Someone usually asks who's bringing the tater salad and the resulting answer is met with extreme caution. You see in the middle-aged fat woman's family there are four(4) different recipes for tater salad. And none of us really like the others' recipes. Mom's recipe is a classic tater salad laced with eggs, onions,(I'm allergic) pickles, (I don't like) relish, (Yuck) and celery seed. Brother's recipe is stocked with onions, (I'm allergic) paprika, and every dressing and sauce in the fridge which total (at last count) 43. Sister's recipe is spiked with onions, Ohio style chili, and caffeine free Diet Pepsi. (No comment for that one) Middle-aged fat woman's recipe is a meat-and-potatoes kind of dish. It only has a few ingredients, none of which are listed above, except eggs. I subscribe to several upscale magazines and had seen a new recipe for Summer Potato Salad. Well, I thought la-dee-da, I'll just have to give this new tater salad a shot. The new recipe called for fancy bleu cheese crumbles, 3 tablespoons of coarse salt, red wine vinegar and freshly chopped chives. What a disaster. Of course, all of the stores were closed for the holiday, so, I had to stop at a convenience store to pick up those unusual ingredients, none of which they had. I got to Mom's house and began to assemble the Summer Potato Salad. (She had already cooked the potatoes) We poured 3 tablespoons of Morton salt into the bowl. We added wild onion stems pulled directly from the front yard. Lastly, we poured blue cheese salad dressing into some cottage cheese to get the crumble effect. We had all of the other ingredients so we added them in as well. Mom looked at me and I looked at her, "You ready to taste it?" In went the spoons, out came a gag and a bleccckkk, she spit hers out and my eyes teared up. It was awful. Just awful. Brother came in and gave it a taste, "That tastes like @%X*^!#," he said, then threw down his spoon in disgust and stomped out of the kitchen. Sister wasn't in town for this holiday, but her daughter was. I looked over at her with spoon in hand and she said, "I'm allergic to tater salad." (Smart kid)